The ameloblastoma, the controversial approach to therapy.

An investigation into the length of time which elapses after the treatment of an ameloblastoma before a recurrence becomes visible, has established that this only exceeds 5 years in 5% of cases. In this study the findings after a follow-up period of at least 5 years after conservative or radical therapy have been extracted from the literature and compared with those of the authors' own series of 84 cases. It is concluded that the recurrence rate is 75% in the cases of multilocular ameloblastomas treated conservatively. Following radical therapy the recurrence rate is 15%. Conservative treatment of unilocular ameloblastomas can be expected to result in a recurrence rate of 20%.